Virginia Courage, who left the community with her family in 2019, said Gloriavale families would need ample support.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere needs to be a lot of discussion with the parents, and it actually might take input from leavers to just help them and reassure them through the process.\u201d<\/p>\n
After leaving the West Coast Christian commune, the most daunting issue facing Courage and her husband was the education of her children, she said.<\/p>\n
When they departed Gloriavale, seven of their 10 children were still in school.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were more concerned about that than where we were going to live, what kind of Christianity or religion we were now going to be a part of, what we were going to wear,\u201d Courage said.<\/p>\n
\u201cGloriavale people are filled with so much fear about the education system, other than the Gloriavale system.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lawyer Dennis Gates with former Gloriavale residents Pearl Valor (centre) and Virginia Courage. Photo \/ RNZ, Jean Edwards<\/p>\n
Education Secretary Ellen MacGregor-Reid wrote to Gloriavale\u2019s private school in October, advising she was considering deregistering the school after a second failed Education Review Office (ERO) audit in as many years.<\/p>\n
July\u2019s ERO report found Gloriavale Christian School had not met three of eight registration criteria and was not a physically and emotionally safe space for students.<\/p>\n
Gloriavale Leavers\u2019 Trust spokesperson Liz Gregory said families who had home-schooled their children had also failed ERO reviews.<\/p>\n
Courage was concerned about the potential for \u201cheavier\u201d indoctrination tactics outside school hours, if children were educated outside Gloriavale.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that\u2019s a real issue that needs to be considered. How much are those little children going to hear \u2013 even more now \u2013 talk about the fact they\u2019re going outside into this worldly school and these people are going to teach them terrible things?<\/p>\n
\u201cNo child should be suffering through that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gloriavale children\u2019s eyes will be opened \u2013 lawyer<\/p>\n
Lawyer Dennis Gates was part of the legal team that represented former Gloriavale residents in a case at the Employment Court. He said the closure of the school would have knock-on effects for the children inside the commune.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith these kids going into public schools, they\u2019ll get unimpeded access to the internet. They\u2019ll see how the rest of the world lives and then go back and see what squalor they\u2019re living in and ask the question why.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gates called on the Government and its applicable ministries to put Gloriavale through a \u201cforensic examination\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey signed off a child welfare policy with Howard Temple, who has now been convicted of child sexual abuse, and all the factors in that child welfare policy that indicate sexual abuse are still there on Saturday.\u201d<\/p>\n
Temple, the 85-year-old former Gloriavale overseeing shepherd, was last week sentenced to 26 months in prison for indecently assaulting young women and girls over 20 years.<\/p>\n
Children’s Commissioner Dr Claire Achmad. Photo \/ RNZ, Cole Eastham-Farrelly<\/p>\n
Children\u2019s Commissioner Dr Claire Achmad told RNZ the transition of Gloriavale children into other schooling options would need to be carefully managed.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo matter what the new educational environment looks like for the children of Gloriavale, it\u2019s going to be really important that there\u2019s continued oversight of that to ensure there\u2019s high-quality education and that it is safe and inclusive for all of the children of Gloriavale.\u201d<\/p>\n
The cancellation was due to take effect from January 23.<\/p>\n
\u2013 RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Virginia Courage, who left the community with her family in 2019, said Gloriavale families would need ample support.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":193711,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[9980,25342,51003,3043,82648,17163,5988,2082,114486,42,5838,89295,43,4062,61,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-193710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-adam","tag-adapt","tag-burns","tag-call","tag-christian","tag-closure","tag-families","tag-for","tag-gloriavale","tag-headlines","tag-help","tag-leavers","tag-news","tag-school","tag-to","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193710\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}